Slashdot Mirror
OnHub Router -- Google's Smart Home Trojan Horse?
An anonymous reader writes: A couple weeks ago, Google surprised everybody by announcing a new piece of hardware: the OnHub Wi-Fi router. It packs a ton of processing power and a bunch of wireless radios into a glowy cylinder, and they're going to sell it for $200, which is on the high end for home networking equipment. Google sent out a number of units for testing, and the reviews are starting to come out. The device is truly Wi-Fi-centric, with only a single port for an ethernet cable. It runs on a Qualcomm IPQ8064 dual-core 1.4GHz SoC with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of storage. You can only access the router's admin settings by using the associated app on a mobile device.
OnHub's data transfer speeds couldn't compete with a similarly priced Asus router, but it had no problem blanketing the area with a strong signal. Ron Amadeo puts his conclusion simply: "To us, this looks like Google's smart home Trojan horse." The smartphone app that accompanies OnHub has branding for something called "Google On," which they speculate is Google's new hub for smart home products. "There are tons of competing smart home protocols out there, all of which are incompatible with one another—imagine HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray, but with about five different players. ... Other than Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, everything in OnHub is a Google/Nest/Alphabet protocol. And remember, the "Built for Google On" stamp on the bottom of the OnHub sure sounds like a third-party certification program."
OnHub's data transfer speeds couldn't compete with a similarly priced Asus router, but it had no problem blanketing the area with a strong signal. Ron Amadeo puts his conclusion simply: "To us, this looks like Google's smart home Trojan horse." The smartphone app that accompanies OnHub has branding for something called "Google On," which they speculate is Google's new hub for smart home products. "There are tons of competing smart home protocols out there, all of which are incompatible with one another—imagine HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray, but with about five different players. ... Other than Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, everything in OnHub is a Google/Nest/Alphabet protocol. And remember, the "Built for Google On" stamp on the bottom of the OnHub sure sounds like a third-party certification program."
That's probably the only ethernet port.
Sorry, but this device is idiotic. It gives Google the ability to entirely remotely control your network from outside, is entirely designed to facilitate their own services, and will become a privacy nightmare ... because if they can access it, someone else can, and law enforcement will be able to go to them and say "OK, we need access to that network, you have to give it to us".
This is the "bend over and take it" device which puts control of your home network in the hands of Google .. primarily to benefit Google.
This is a terrible idea, and it's not something I'd trust even a little. This is all about locking you into Google, and making it easy for them to manage your home remotely.
I would put absolutely zero trust in this device.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Can someone please write a browser plugin that replaces "smart" with "Big Brother" ?
This is the Apple AirPort Extreme. Same basic performance, same feature set, same way to admin it same price.
But because it says Google, we're supposed to believe this is part of some super-duper conspiracy to take over the world.
Right.
Or maybe Google just wants some of the market that Apple currently has, selling the same router you can get for $50 for $200, and being the best selling home router in spite of that?
It's not much of a router if it only has 2 ports. I would expect more for $200 on the consumer side.
Throw a switch on it and it has as many ports as you want. It's a router, not a switch.